- Brenda Leyland shared scathing conspiracies about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann online.
- In 2014, after being confronted about her posts and the subsequent fallout, she killed herself.
When Benjamin Leyland's mother called, upset, and saying she might be in trouble, part of Benjamin's initial response was a "perverse satisfaction" in knowing the woman who had so often been critical and prone to explosive outbursts now needed their help.
But the feeling — of seeing someone who had done them wrong getting what they "deserved" — didn't last long, Benjamin told Insider. Just days after she called, seeking legal advice from her child who, at the time, worked at a major law firm, Brenda Leyland died by suicide.
She had been outed in 2014 by a British tabloid as one of many online trolls who spewed vitriolic conspiracy theories about the 2007 disappearance of then-3-year-old Madeleine McCann, who vanished from her hotel room during a family vacation and has never been found.
For years, Brenda Leyland, under the Twitter username sweepyface, threatened the McCann parents, accusing them of playing a role in their daughter's disappearance, and called for them to "suffer" for their alleged crimes.
A reporter from Sky News confronted the 63-year-old outside her home about her digital abuse of the family whose daughter had disappeared nearly a decade earlier. Benjamin told Insider their mother, who was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, could not bear the shameful confrontation — and the subsequent fallout, which inverted the abuse and made Brenda the target of extensive online harassment.
People with Borderline Personality Disorder often have trouble controlling their anger or regulating their other emotions, and tend to develop patterns of unstable self-image, moods, and relationships.
"People with BPD are responding in the only way that makes sense to them and have developed these behaviors as a way to survive the emotional turmoil they are forced to endure on a daily basis," Helene D'Jay, a licensed professional counselor and Executive Director of Young Adult Services for Newport Healthcare, previously told Insider, adding: "it's important to understand that people with BPD are not purposefully trying to manipulate people, or destroy relationships, they are trying to survive and interact in the only way they know how."
One commenter wrote in response to news of Brenda Leyland's suicide that she "deserved her fate" after endless comments had rolled in encouraging violence against her or saying she should kill herself following the initial Sky News report.
"The comments were like, 'we hope you beg for mercy,' 'we hope you get raped orally, anally, and vaginally,' like people photoshopped images of her face as though she was this zombie vampire, you know, with a blood-stained mouth," Benjamin said.
The question wasn't whether their mother's behavior was reprehensible. It obviously was, Benjamin acknowledged, but did she — did anyone — deserve that?
A 'chillingly inevitable' death
Looking back, Benjamin told Insider their mother's death felt "chillingly inevitable" based on her previous patterns of behavior, which added a layer of grief for all the missed signals Benjamin thought they should have been watching for.
Those feelings became a catalyst to confront long-dormant personal demons that had been passed down through the family and forced Benjamin to intimately grapple with the challenge of how to deal with people we love who act inappropriately, even abusively, while suffering from mental illness and addiction.
"On a very broad level if you look at it, it's like she's identifying with Madeleine McCann, who's this little girl who's gone missing, because she feels like she's this little girl who's gone missing," Benjamin told Insider of their mother, saying her own trauma played out in a "pathological way" that she wrongfully took out on the McCanns, much like anyone else dealing with violence or addiction issues.
The thousands of tweets, which Brenda considered a public service, were dedicated to finding out the truth of what happened to Madeleine, a common perspective among conspiracy theorists who harass survivors of tragedies, like the Sandy Hook families.
One post on her since-deleted account read: "#mccann Q 'How long must the mccanns suffer?' Answer 'For the rest of their miserable lives'"
"To Kate and Gerry, you will be hated by millions for the rest of your miserable, evil, conniving lives, have a nice day," she wrote in another.
Her tweets included harassing threats and hate messages to the toddler's grieving parents — as well as occasional, surprising posts defending the McCanns, condemning those who laughed "like demented hyenas" at the family's plight, BuzzFeed reported. People with BPD can swing quickly from displaying intense adoration and affection one minute to intense anger and hatred, D'Jay previously told Insider — a symptom known as "splitting."
Their mother's mental illness and long-term instability stemmed back to her childhood, Benjamin told Insider. They said her inability to find a safe space internally to process her dysfunctional relationships with her parents and partners led to her channeling "excess psychic energy" to her hateful posts on Twitter.
But it was only because Benjamin was close enough to their mother — codependent, even enmeshed, they said, with Benjamin consistently taking the role of emotional regulator for their mother — that they were able to see her humanity and love her regardless, even when she was being publicly shamed and harassed for her own abusive behavior.
Healing through provocative authenticity
For four years following Brenda's death, Benjamin struggled intensely with addiction and has only recently begun speaking publicly about how the ordeal impacted their life. The deep shame that Brenda seemed to have felt in her own life fed a shame within Benjamin that they said only began to dissipate when they confronted it head-on.
"Our societal infrastructure makes it nigh impossible for us to come together in the excrement of our experiences," Benjamin said, adding: "I'm trying to provoke authenticity with other people by being flatly honest."
In addition to the personal transformation their mother's suicide prompted Benjamin to undergo, they said the ordeal taught them lessons about how people can be easily convinced to attack others when they perceive someone has done something wrong — rightfully or not.
Benjamin felt a twinge of reckoning when their mother called for help after the news of her Twitter activity broke. The sort of I-told-you-so smugness and sense of Brenda getting what she deserved only disappeared because catastrophe followed for the Leyland family.
To Benjamin, Brenda had been so much more than a would-be anonymous harasser of a grieving family. She was witty, charming, and charismatic, with a short fuse and penchant for making up stories that, in hindsight, may have served as warning signs to her dark future. But to the rest of the world, she was found guilty of egregious abuse against the McCanns — and was punished in kind.
Though few people will act out by sending abusive messages to grieving families online, Benjamin noted everyone knows the feeling of having done something wrong — and when we do, we hope we will be forgiven.
But, when judging others, people ruthlessly seek out imperfections, which Benjamin theorizes is a way of deflecting from the shame they're feeling about themselves, as it was for their mother.
"The irony of the trolls trolling the troll, you know, that played out in real time, and was just very confusing," Benjamin told Insider. "And it kind of bears out the fact that, when there is a scapegoat out there, it's an opportunity for people to ignore that part of them that is capable of evil."